Spirited Read Free Page A

fresh wigwam, where all his possessions had been lovingly arranged for him. His father’s things were burned in his old wigwam that very night, to prevent the sickness that had permeated them from harming Wusamequin.
    He had not felt ready to devote himself to his tribe’s spiritual welfare, but he had accepted the honor. His wife had glowed with pride. And she had loved him well his first night as shaman. Their son had grown in her belly after that.
    Wusamequin had worked hard to learn what his father had not had time to teach him. He felt strong medicine within him, but he had not yet learned how to call it forth.
    Then his wife and child were killed. In less than two years, he had lost his father, his woman, and his seed. It was more than he could bear; he withdrew, and no enticement could bring him back into the heart of the community. Not even the beautiful maiden Odina, who had loved him before he married his wife, and who loved him still.
    It was obvious to everyone in the village that his spirit was slowly dying. His grief and hatred were consuming him like wolves starving in winter.
    The loss of another medicine man so soon after the death of the great Miantonomi would be a blow to his people. They were already severely weakened by the wars and the constant encroachment of the pale newcomers. The white skin settlers fished out the rivers and cleared the forest to plant their corn; the forest animals were therefore easier to hunt, and the newcomers killed them all.
    The white skins brought death in many forms, and the apple-cheeked children of the People of the River lost their fat and became gaunt like old men. Their mothers spent endless hours foraging for groundnuts, leeks, and wild onions. Their vast supplies of cherries, black currants, and blue figs shrank. On the shore of the great waters, their prized oyster beds had been picked clean. The rivers of herring, shad, and trout had thinned out.
    As the People grew hungry, the hunters ranged farther away in search of game. The warriors went with them, so desperate were the People for food. And that was when the white devils had struck: when the young men were gone, and Wusamequin and the elders had been left to care for the women and children.
    In that, too, he had failed his people.
    But the villagers still looked to their warriors and to Wusamequin to save them. Wusamequin concentratedon learning his shaman’s Way: he alone could part the veil of smokes between the world of men and the world of ghosts and spirits. He was a spirit warrior who walked in moccasins no other man dared to wear.
    But he did not wear them comfortably. He did not feel like a spirit warrior. No feathers graced his hair. No woman shared his bed.
    And so he danced, red-eyed and tearless, and remembered a time when his wife—whose name he did not speak—had whispered to him, “My great husband, I am so happy in this moment that if I died in the next, I would only laugh.”
    She had not laughed. She had died screaming for her baby as two British soldiers shot her with their muskets and left her bleeding and broken. She had died in agony. And her baby …
    His baby …
    “Bring me peace. Bring me relief,” Wusamequin sang as he danced. In his pain, he ran his tomahawk across his palm, hissing from the cruel kiss of his blade. It was painted red now, but his blood would not feed its hunger. His tomahawk was starving.
    His heart was starving.
    “Give me peace!” he shouted.
    Another wind shot through the clearing. Sparks flared into the sky, sizzling against his bare chest and shoulders.
    “Give me back my loved ones!”
    He stomped his feet; he whirled in a circle. The drums of the spirits cannonaded through the treetops;clouds gathered above him and crouched, low and ready.
    A third time the wind gathered its forces, and this time the spirit of the wind blew his essence into Wusamequins mourning fire.
    The smoke billowed and coiled like the whitewater of a rapids; then it thickened